The Wild Drink Blog

This could turn out to be quite a long post, though i’m not sure yet because I haven’t written it! Ideally I would have blogged whilst in Italy, but I don’t have a laptop and it’s a bit too much to ask from the iPhone. Anyway, let’s begin….

I was invited out to Susegana by Tom from Origin and Jason from CMA a few weeks ago. Tom, complete with engineers Mark and Malcolm, trainer Phil and business development man, Andy, were going out for training on CMA’s Astoria Plus 4 U (+4U) machine. You may remember me taking delivery of one of these beauties a few months ago. I have been lucky enough to be using the plus 4 u for a number of weeks and CMA were interested to see how we had gotten on and to do some training on the engineering side of things.

Susegana is near Treviso and about 40mins from Venice, oh and did I mention it’s one of the most beautiful settings i’ve ever seen?!

Yup, they have their own fully Astoria branded hotel..!

CMA moved into a brand new ’state of the art’ factory about a year ago and it truly is a spectacular place in every sense. Our first full day was spent in the factory itself and looking at the production of the machines. I’ve never been to an espresso machine factory before and i’m not sure what I was expecting, this factory makes more machines than any other factory in the world and the level of efficiency and cleanliness is impressive.

Please check out the Flickr set for more pictures as there are only so many you can put in one blog post! Unfortunately there were a few shots which were too close up to machines which I have not published.

The tour around the factory was conducted by Flavio Urizzi, Export Manager and judge of various national barista championships. It really was incredible to see raw sheets of steel be bent and cut into the various components of an espresso machine. The robots in particular received considerable attention from us (Phil) as they worked in conjunction with each other to make drip trays, frames and steam wand brackets.

The production line itself was probably the most stunning part, you can walk from one end to the other in 3 minutes and see a machine go from being a frame to being a fully working boxed espresso machine. Boilers and copper pipes are fabricated in a seperate factory a few miles away, they produce boilers solely for CMA. Flavio told us that it takes 6 hours, including 2 hours testing to make one machine from sheet metal and pipes to a functional, paneled, ready to ship boxed product.

After lunch we moved on to the training room and to the company of Paolo, who knows the Plus 4 U inside out and who’s job it is to train on the operations and technical maintenance of the machine.

First of all we looked at operations and customisation of that various menu functions (16 in total). I’ve already played around with the menu quite a few times so was familiar with most functions, but CMA have released a E PROM update very recently (and plan to release more in the future) which adds new functionality to the machine. Along with the usual independent group temp, independent coffee reservoir temp, steam boiler pressure, energy saving standby functions, self learning, and more… they have now added extraction time display to the front screen.

This picture demonstrates it well…

As soon as you press the button the timer starts and when you stop the extraction it shows the time for around 10 seconds. I’m hoping for 10/sec for the next E PROM update!

Alternatively you can display flow meter warnings. This works by setting your grind and dose (on any grinder) then extracting an espresso and asking the machine to remember it. If for example, the next day a barista is making espresso and his grind/dose is off, the machine will ask for it to be adjusted accordingly by measuring flow rate. I’m looking forward to trying the flow meter system out in the real world, It seems like something that could be very helpful as a training tool when unsupervised, but I would expect a well trained barista to make their adjustments according to taste and look of extraction as well.

Next we delved into the innards of the Plus 4 U, to see how the hell these things work! Paolo and Jason showed to us the various components of the machine and explained to us how the group reservoirs work. In a nutshell, the groups are fed from reservoirs which can be independently controlled, pre-infusion works not in the group head but in conjunction with the reservoirs. We then removed and re-fitted a group head whist keeping the machine operational on the other group and the steam boiler.

It struck me that the machines were quite easy to work on, there are quite a few wires and cables in there for all the different probes and controls, but getting around and fitting components is not as difficult a task as I expected. I also got a sneak peak at a 4 group Plus 4 U in a design and testing area…

In the evening Flavio treated us to an incredible meal in a restaurant higher up near the mountains, we lost count but it totaled at least 10 courses followed by a glass of Scrupino, the local digestif which consists of lemon sorbet blended with prosecco and vodka… coming to a cocktail list near you soon!

On our last day we did a small exam about the plus 4 u, most of it was technical but we somehow managed to wing it! which left an afternoon consisting of a small amount of sightseeing (including huge prosecco vineyards) and some extended espresso consumption!

I could probably have written three times as much but i’ll leave it there I think. Big thankyou’s to Flavio, Paolo and Jason, also thanks to Daniel and Barbara from marketing dept. I personally had an amazing trip, learned a lot and ate even more!